Ever since the launch of the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy, Europe has been ubiquitous in higher education research. While many studies take as their point of departure the institutionalization of European higher education policy arena(s) and explore their effects on the national and organizational level, the analysis of what kind of policy instruments and ideas are developed on the European level and how they evolve over time focus on single initiatives and programmes and thus remain fragmented. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the European side of differentiated integration in a more comprehensive manner. It asks whether European integration in higher education has been losing its momentum, and answers by tracing three distinct developments: (1) how political ambitions of the EU’s Modernisation Agenda have been diluted over time, (2) how and why the political saliency of the Bologna Process has decreased and (3) what are the implications of regional response responses to European initiatives (e.g. automatic recognition in Benelux and soon Baltics and Nordics) for European integration in higher education.
